Shark Swallowed Whole By ... Another Shark

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Everyone knows the story: The little fish gets eaten by a big
fish, and the big fish gets eaten by an even bigger fish, and so
on.

But it isn't often that the big fish is a shark — in this
case, a dogfish — that then gets swallowed whole by a much larger
sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus), one of the
nastiest-looking top predators in the ocean.

This bizarre "turducken of the sea" photo was captured by
researchers at the University of Delaware's Ocean Exploration,
Remote Sensing, Biogeography (ORB) Lab. The scientists were in
Delaware Bay this month to recapture sand tiger sharks that had
been tagged with satellite-tracking tags, or to recover tags that
had come off prematurely. [ See
Video of Shark Trapping & Tagging ]

To capture a sand tiger shark, researchers baited a hook with a
menhaden, a common marine fish, which was quickly snatched up by
a
smooth dogfish (Mustelus canis). "This unlucky
smooth dogfish couldn't resist the menhaden used as bait and,
unfortunately, fell victim to one of the top predators in the
bay," ORB researchers wrote on their Facebook page. "The dogfish
was about 3 feet [1 meter] long and completely swallowed by the
sand tiger shark."

The sand tiger shark is also called the ragged-tooth shark
because of its three fearsome rows of protruding teeth, which the
sharks use to spear their prey (usually lobsters, rays, squid and
smaller fish). Despite their terrifying demeanor, sand tiger
sharks are not aggressive toward humans, and are common in
aquariums because of their size — they can grow to be 10 feet (3
m) long — and their breeding success in captivity.